Carnivale
by Nyah
Summary: Sometimes you have to put the masks on before you can take the masks off. Angela hosts a masquerade for Mardi Gras. Booth/Brennan. Rated for later parts.
1. you're just a spectator

**Disclaimer: **Not mine, or I'd let them have more fun.

**Rating: **This part's pretty harmless. I make no promises about the second.

**Note: **This is a teaser for Mardi Gras Eve. The plan is to post the rest for tomorrow's holiday. But tomorrow is Mardi Gras so no plans can truly be counted upon. Enjoy.

**The Theory of Relativity**

"You're both coming tonight, right?" Angela asks. There's something aggressive in the sparks of her eyes as she strikes a stance, ready to pin down their acceptance under a stiletto.

"Yeah, I RSVP'd and everything," Booth's tone rests between proud and annoyed because he did it right even if he thought it was stupid. Angela was playing hostess and he saw her almost every day. But the invitation was embossed. Calligraphied. It had asked for an RSVP in script too elegant to be taught in school anymore. The silvered letters curved enticingly around time and place, held hope in their loops, and promised wonders in their corners.

It was the least he could do to respond. Let it know manners hadn't gone the way of penmanship.

"Good, because these are for you," she holds out faces to Booth and Brennan. It's something she does everyday. Only today, the faces are not for the dead, the faces are for them.

"Masks?" Booth asks, the question mark written plain on his face, curling between his eyes and shimmying down the length of his nose to perch daringly on his upper lip. It settles there. Waiting. Even though he's read the invitation.

"Thank you, Angela, this matches my dress very well," Brennan says not at all disturbed because she doesn't yet understand and she's gotten in the habit of overlooking her partner's upper lip.

Booth's closer. His tongue skims out to taste apprehension. "They're great Angela but … I mean, we're supposed to wear them?" The question mark's grown more twisted, it's wondering how many muscles it takes to frown. He's gotten trapped insides faces before.

"Yes, you have to wear them." He granted her too much space for an answer and she pivoted on his politeness and found room for a command. "It's Mardi Gras, guys. If you're not in a mask, you're just a _spectator_."

In her mouth, the word has sudden spice. Loneliness, isolation, impotence.

From her mouth to their ears, none of the flavor escapes. They've always been uneasy on the sidelines.

##

Angela's party is at Hodgins's house and that might mean nothing or everything.

Neither of them has been there before they assure each other on the drive over.

She spends the time on small talk. It's modern day alchemy, turning remarks about murder to comfortable minutes in the passenger's seat. Even though she's not trying to hide the fact that she's compelled to look at him. Of course she's not. She's honest. She has nothing to hide.

He always looks good in a suit but not in the way most men look good (hair finally flattened, lines ironed straight, _hey, you clean up nice_). Most men most wear suits like sudden bursts of gentility, form temporarily imposed on chaos. He wears a suit everyday like he once wore a uniform. He wears a suit like it's all or nothing, black jacket or bare skin, starched cotton or shivering abs, clean lines or wild abandon.

He wears a suit like he knows it would look better on her bedroom floor.

She, in turn, is stunning.

He thinks he's forgotten to breathe for a second but it's more dire than that. There's something more permanent to her beauty than interrupted inhalation. More dangerous. She's tied a knot in his windpipe.

She'd smiled a him, radiant, before folding herself into the passenger's seat, serious as a collapsed lung.

He can't take his eyes off her. But there's an invitation (in his mind, embossed with guilt) and he'd RSVP'd. So he pulls his eyes back and trains them on the road. He must keep something of himself, after all. It's it in the rules. The line. Not his. Hers. He's only allowed to give out the vital parts one at a time. Simple. Reliable. If the heart's in overdrive, the brain's in neutral. If there's a knot in his windpipe, then his eyes are on the road.

He's already regretting the mask in her lap. But at least with the mask there will be no radiant smile tying lover's knots, it's only her eyes he'll have to worry about. And his.

He's almost relived when she brings up God.

"I'm surprised you're willing to participate in Angela's party," she says. "It's quite pagan."

"Mardi Gras, Bones," he says, nodding at himself in the rear view mirror, checking that his eyes are fixed on the road. "It's a Catholic holiday. Kicks off Lent."

Brennan laughs in that way she does that's half a snort and wholly endearing. It's a laugh that's obnoxious and a laugh that makes a point without trying for either. "It's Bacchanalian! Christian holidays tend to be thinly veiled pagan rituals but Mardi Gras is particularly transparent. Music, revelry, drunkenness …. There might as well be maenads."

He catches the glance he knew she'd throw to see if he's understood. Intercepts it and runs for his own end zone. She wouldn't appreciate the sports metaphor any more than she will his refutation. "It's all about the contrast," he says recalling a priest who'd taught religion his senior year.

Fr. Trent had been radical in his conservatism. He probably would have worn a hair shirt if it wouldn't have set the bishop frowning (a twisted question mark frown). Trent had stood in front of two dozen young-trying-to-be-men and blown their minds one Tuesday afternoon. It was their duty as Catholics, he said, to rebel that night. To thrill. To revel. To howl.

And then to wear the ashes of it all when the sun came up.

"You can't understand the fast without the feast." Booth says. "Doesn't mean anything."

"The definition of the word hardly cha—"

"It's relativity, Bones," he cuts in. "That's scientific. Einstein said so."

Like always, she laughs at his scientific stabs in the dark.

"'Lent' means 'spring'," she says and runs her fingers over the contours of her mask where it sits in her lap. An identity waiting to be assumed. Like Roxanne. Like Wanda.

His mask waits in the back seat. He wonders if the new face knows how to throw knives, punches. He wonders if it drives a motorcycle. He wonders how it fits with hers.


	2. knockin on heaven's door

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**Note:** I thought this would be two parts but I was wrong. And so it continues, hope you don't mind.

[2] _knockin' on heaven's door _

Hodgins has a doorman. Or a butler. Something. Someone. And maybe it's just for tonight and maybe it's just for the party. But probably not. Hodgins has kid gloves he uses just for driving. Kid on kid, gloves on wheel. Hodgins despises the rich but it doesn't stop him from living richly.

So, a doorman.

The man accepts the invitation and gives a little bow that only pretends to be apologetic. His eyes are politely downcast but he makes no move to open the door. "Your masks please, sir and madam," he insists and it's sort of shocking that he speaks with a relatively non-descrip, east coast accent. Booth feels a little cheated. St. Peter shouldn't sound like he's from Baltimore.

"Oh, we should ...." Booth bobbles the words and fumbles with the mask in his hands, waving it vaguely to prove that he brought it along like the invitation said.

"Yes, kindly wear the mask, sir," Says the gatekeeper, neatly folding his gloved hands.

When he looks over at Brennan, she's already securing the ribbons of her mask in a neat bow, her fingers pulling the ends even and then plucking the strings of his mask and pressing his shoulders so he turns. The mask descends over his face, its cool plaster contours welding seamlessly to the planes and angles as if Angela herself had built his face and was now fitting it back into the mold. Remembering his shape for him.

Brennan's fingers skim the tops of his ears and for a second the night rings with a high, dull pitch as all his nerve endings abandon their auditory posts to amplify the touch and send it shivering to the soles of his feet where it washes warmly from heel to toe. Her fingers smooth over his scalp, flattening his hair so it won't catch in the ribbon.

Attention diverted, all his thoughts and ambitions dancing on her fingertips like angels on the head of a pin, his eyes start to slide out of focus. But then they catch on the doorman, not old, not young, not leaning but guarding the double doors, pearly white and soundly shut. The doorman's eyebrows rise, quick punctuation marks. Inquiring. Anticipating.

The man holds Booth's gaze long enough that the urge rises in the agent to ask what he's looking at. And then it's his hand rising to his face, to the face over his face. And he has no idea what it looks likes. He tries to dig up a picture in his mind but the best he can do is a guess at midnight blue and maybe some silver swirls. And there's something ... well ... he can't shake the impression of a gleam in its eye, a glint, a suggestion, a _maybe_.

But the mask's eyes are empty. Or they were until a second ago.

He feels his face rearrange itself for uncertainty as he looks at the doorman. The man's gaze doesn't waver, doesn't acknowledge the knit or purl of his brow. And then Booth realizes the doorman can't see his uncertainty, doesn't know about the unknown.

He feels the glint rising in his eye. He'd come with a mask, like the invitation said. He'd come to present himself, wearing a new suit and the shape of his sins.

Finished tying, Brennan runs her palms across his shoulders, adjusting the impeccable suit, taking the measure of a man too big to wrap her mind around. The breadth of his shoulders is her arms stretched out just so. Her hands chase a ripple in the wool, shooing it to hide in the curves of his elbows.

As if on cue, he turns to face her. There is a searching look in the eyes that rove back and forth across her face. She takes in the dark, frozen features with their cracks and fissures of silver and smiles behind her own mask.

"Ready?" He asks and she thinks it's relief she hears spilling from the lips behind lips.

He offers his arm and she's already caught up in the game. She's an anthropologist. She understands the meaning of a mask.

She slides her hand through the crook of his elbow, letting her fingers rest there. She can't close her hand around the circumference of his arm but she can let her palm drift, down his forearm, the length of one hand, then two.

She understands the meaning of a mask. Behind it she can be anyone, doesn't have to be who she always was. She can be the woman on his arm. She can be the woman who measures his body with her own, with the breadth of hands and the angle of elbows.

So often, American culture got parties wrong. One attended in her best dress, wearing a thousand faces. One face to laugh at tired jokes, one to make polite introductions, another to turn down a second flute of champagne.

But now they were properly masked and the doorman came to life like a wound automaton, pushing the door open with a jerky bow.

Booth pressed a hand to the small of her back, warm where her dress dipped low. Behind her mask she smiled up at him, a smile she wouldn't second-guess or regret in the morning. She was only wearing one face tonight and it was one not shaped for consequences.

TBC


	3. inside out

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**Note:** To be continued.

_[3] inside out_

Sometimes it happens exactly when you expect it. The front door opens like a crack in the world. He ushers her through ahead of him, crossing the threshold into Hodgins's house. He thinks he going _in _but he's wrong.

The light in the house is broad and golden. There are no dark corners to the vaulted ceilings, no ungilded edges to the molding. There is a grand staircase, at its base it is curled and split, left and right, the two sides climbing up and up to finally plateau together at the center. And between ponderous feet of the twin staircases is another door, one slightly open and overflowing with music and laughter.

So they look at each other. Her mask is all jewel tones. Deep green licks over her jaw to skirt wide, golden lips. Purple sweeps the curve of her cheekbones and drinks the light around her eyes. There's some kind of trick to the colors, bottomless depths and shadows. She is a surrealist's landscape, a midnight world painted under a sunlit sky.

They look at each other and go in through the door, out to the party.

"Seeley!" Michelle calls his name with welcome and delight because the walls of the ballroom are wide and Cam always refers to him with fond familiarity at home. She wears a glittering half-mask that ends above her upper lip in a tail like a kite's. Her mouth grins around his name, splitting to laugh riotously when he lifts her from her feet in a hug.

When he sets her on her feet, she is still smiling. Booth can see her there, grinning, on the edge of adulthood like she's shown up to a party in her mother's heels and lollipop lipstick and still been invited to stay. "Isn't it past your bedtime?" He asks, only pretending because here and now, he doesn't feel much like a father.

"Nope," Michelle replies, gleefully checking a watch that isn't there. "Still ten minutes to midnight."

"I told you we would arrive on time," Brennan says, fitting herself into the illusion, if a little stiffly.

Michelle's greeting alerts the others. Their friends and colleagues filter out of the crowd. Identifying themselves by the purpose of their gaits and warmth in their voices.

"Sweetie, you made it!" Angela crows because they're the last ones to show. But the order of things doesn't matter much. Behind masks, time is a precious metal, glittering, malleable, just for show. Masquerades are not like lovers, they don't break the laws of physics. They just take advantage of the soft spots.

###

Almost no one would expect it of her but she believes in holiness.

The problem is the size of it.

She can't confine holiness to symbols or sacraments. Wedding bands and blessed water. She can't relegate it to Sunday. To her, _life_ is holy, is unlikely, is sacred.

Right now she should be uneasy because there is something different to the life in this place, at this party. She doesn't feel lost in the vastness of it. Instead she feels like she might just be able to stretch out her arms and touch the edges of the universe. She has no idea why this place is holy, just that she feels holy in it.

They're the last ones to arrive and the small talk is already long over. Angela insists on dancing and Booth offers to get her a drink. "Water, please," she says with an attempt at foresight. Later, when the point of no return is a memory of when the night was young, she'll insist that she knew even then, before the first drink. She knew there was a slant to the floor.

Angela dances, wild and whirling, twisting exuberantly between the beats. Sometimes Brennan forgets that this is how her friend really looks, that she makes herself small to fit into the world of science and simulations. The artist's eyes are aglow, clear windows, open doors. It takes Brennan a moment to remember that Angela is wearing a mask like everyone else. Angela has always had honest eyes.

Right in the middle of the song Angela hugs her violently. "I'm so glad you came!" And she means that she's glad that Brennan has come to her for once. Has stepped into her world. Has judged it substantial enough to hold her for a little while.

And then Angela's taking her by the hand, guiding her through the press of the crowd. "Where are we going?"

"Booth got you a drink, right?"

"Yes. But ...."

"You owe him a dance!" Angela laughs like she planned the while thing. and maybe she would have if plans could exist at this party. The masked crowd just shifts and pulses out of their way. Nothing can keep its shape here.

On the periphery of the dance floor, Booth is talking to Hodgins. Brennan knows, without seeing his face, that he's smiling. It's not hard. He smiles with his whole body like he does everything else.

When she reaches him, Booth hands one of the two glasses in his hands. "Rum," he warns happily apologetic. "The bartender says they're all out of water."


	4. someone else

**Disclamier: **See part 1

**Note:** Found out last night I'd been accepted to my Master's program. Amongst various methods of celebration, I decided to update. To Be Continued.

[4]

Anyone else would have given him a hard time about it. Laughed. Claimed he was trying to get her drunk.

Hell, he himself would've given the bartender a hard time about it too but the guy had mixed the drinks right there on the bar, healthy measures of rum and a cursory splash of juice, a slap sealed with a kiss, and passed them over like it was just the way of things. "We're all outta water tonight." Maybe it was a joke but it was one serious enough to stop short of the eyes. Nothing to wink about.

Booth started to protest, he just wanted two waters, but the kid was standing there all serious-eyed, looking for all the world like Sweets behind the bar and that was a fiction he'd lived before so he just nodded, almost contrite, paying homage to another life.

The drink was strong enough on the first sip that the next one wasn't so bad. But then again, his thresh hold for bitter was set pretty high. What most doctors don't know is anesthesia induced cotton mouth tastes a hell of a lot like a hard liquor hangover.

The rum's strong and warm and melts the edges of his vision to an easy amber. So his eyes trip that short circuit, that hard line in his brain drawn between should and shouldn't. A tiny thing, a pair of letters and an apostrophe. It's got nothing on the curve of her hips or the exact shade of her hair.

By the time he bumps into Hodgins he's admitted to himself that he's looking for her in the crowd. "This is why I wanted water," he says to the scientist. He'd wanted water, something to sip and sink his amber-soft eyes into, something to clear his head like a nun's ruler to the knuckles, like an admonishing stare from the altar. Water. Clear, strong, unambiguous. Holy water. Saving grace.

Hodgins must think it's a comment on the quality of the liquor because he just nods and barks a laugh. Then, in that voice of his that always sounds tense, intense, like it's been allowed out of the prison of cynicism for a walk in the yard, he says, "I hear we're all out." Hodgins's voice never trusts the guards on the towers. He thinks he might shoot himself down.

"Yep, all out." They'd walked a few paces into the ballroom, he and she, before Michelle was on them. It could have only been a minute, maybe two, the way Bones measures things. But he has his own system and the walk across the ballroom felt, not longer, but ... well, he'd lived a whole other life inside of four coma days. Could he walk into another life in the space between doors, in the time of a few steps?

Maybe.

His evidence is this: She'd fit onto his arm like her name was on the space. Her thumb made gentle circles there, soft eddies that sparked through the wool of his suit, humming with familiarity that shouldn't be. And when she spoke she looked up, eyes only for him. Like it was nothing. Her eyes were the only real thing the mask had left of her and she'd set them on him.

He wondered what she saw. What was the shape of his mask, his suit, his sins? She'd seen it all before.

But maybe not all at the same time.

It wasn't that he wanted to keep himself back. Those were her rules though and he understood them well enough. If the heart was in overdrive, the head was in neutral. She didn't put much stock in monogamy. It went against anthropology, against her nature, for one man to be everything to her.

So he can only be one thing to her at a time. If he learns from her, he can't teach her. If he relies on her, he can't protect her. If he's her partner, he can't be her lover. If he catches her, he can't keep her. If he needs her, she can't need him back.

He can only be one thing to her at a time. Only show her the parts and not the whole. But maybe, he thinks, they've been fooled by the masks , fooled into thinking they've left enough of the essential things out ... when it's all right there in her eyes.

Maybe, he thinks, she's recognized him for what he is.

Hers.

So water had seemed like the best option.

Only ….

###

"They're all out of water."

She accepts the glass and takes a sip and then another and she knows she is probably supposed to give him a hard time about it but she doesn't. "Angela says I owe you a dance."

Booth puts his free hand up in surrender. He gets that look, that charming I-can't-believe-my-luck look. "I know better than to argue with Angela," he says.

With the surrendered hand, he whisks her onto the dance floor, twirling her expertly, in a tacit admission of lessons. "Who are you?" She asks, laughing.

"Someone else," he replies, not laughing. His voice comes from his gut, deep and dry as a riverbed. They're all out of water.

For a moment it's all she can do to look over his shoulder and find the floor. It's done in immaculate squares of black and white like a game board. But she swears there's a bend to the pattern, between the press and swirl of the dancers, just beyond the edge of her vision, parallel lines meet. Chess metaphors are some of the few she understands but she thinks the twist in this game is there might not be any rules.

They'd finished their drinks too quickly, stayed on the dance floor too long, are standing too close.

Her mouth has gone suddenly dry.

So she says, "I'm thirsty."

And he he replies, "They're all out of water tonight."

She knows what that means.

So does he.

They're out of water tonight, out of lines, out of rationality and saving grace and excuses and brain scans. They're out of places you can pause and take a breath and tell yourself that this is the right path because it is difficult. Doing the difficult thing can be just as wicked when you've stopped thinking about why you're doing it and not the other.

There's a glint in his eye and she can read it like a mark on a bone. _They're all out of salvation today, guess we'll have to try being damned together. _


	5. standstill

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**Note: **The chapter title says it all. But we'll get there. Or somewhere anyway.

_[5] Standstill_

They've stopped dancing and it's the first time this evening's felt familiar. They've gotten stuck here before. Hearts beating fast, spinning in neutral.

He's grinning at her and it's so natural that he wouldn't know it except it changes the feel of the mask, its in the pressure of the plaster contours that he realizes what she does to his face.

Yes, this place is familiar. It's a place out of the music. Out of the rain that leaks into their cracks and the wind that blows in the space between. It's a place paved in debts that will never be called in, grown over with habit-turned-ritual. An island, An oasis. A surrogate relationship. He owes her too much. He has nothing left to give anyone else. So he never has to try.

It's a place of comfort, where he can lie down and rest and feel whole. Neutral ground where he never has to speak. She understands what he'd say. As much as she ever can anyway. And if that's the best there can be, isn't that enough?

He's felt it for a while now. They, the two of them, partners, are becoming legend. Some kind of archetype, some pie in the sky, some Mulder and Scully. Soon there will be a book about them. They'll be this huge thing, iconic and frozen. Not quite people anymore.

It makes him nervous to think that what they are might be bigger than what they could be.

It's not long before the other dancers spin too close, wondering why they're still, wondering if they're okay. Snatches of whispered concern ride the music, fluttering like grace notes on the edges of the melody. Party-goers pass with renewed vigor, showing them how it's done. Dance floors have no destinations. The only rule is to keep moving until the music stops.

But he doesn't know how to move, how to leave this stalemate. The idea of salvation has always had him by the throat.

Luck is on his side. Or maybe it's chaos. The party is drunk on rum and anonymity. It would rather collapse in on itself than permit an eye to its storm. It'll send a wind to steal his breath and remind him he needs to breathe, to blow through the cracks in him before it let's him stop long enough to grow moss.

"Mind if I cut in?" asks a man behind a mask. The face he's wearing is gruesomely jovial, delightfully sinister. Chin and nose leer, swooping large and curved like a beak. He might be someone Angela knows, Hacker maybe, or Sully. He might be anybody.

"Yes," they say together. Surprising each other. It's a sharp yes, it's a yes that means no.

Suddenly they are moving again. Unstuck. Un-neutral. Dancing, they are untouchable, they already belong to each other.

"I'm glad you minded," he says and before he finishes he's already prepared to repeat himself. The important things have always been toughest for her to hear and the music is still playing. But she just nods and he wonders if it's because she's standing so close or if here, true things are just louder than all the stuff that gets in the way.

"Why?" she asks. But she already knows how often his good manners are an excuse for self-deprivation. "Would you have said you didn't mind?" What she means is: would you have lied?

"No," he says and here it's true. Here he is safe behind his mask, grins and greed look alike. Here, good manners are not the same as martyrdom, virtue does not mean giving away everything you want.

###

"No," he says. She's not used to the way he sounds without a filter. He sounds loud enough to smash things open.

He's holding her close enough that she feels like she's breathing him in. She is. They are inhaling the other's atoms, exchanging charged particles. Just because it sounds romantic doesn't mean it's not true.

She's brave, braver, on rum and music. She wonders how long he'll be without the filter. Are they out of time or is it still ten minutes to midnight? Does she have time to waste or has she wasted enough already?

"You love me." It was supposed to be a question, she'd meant to see how much truth she could wring out of him.

She's terrified of what happens next. But that's right too. Bravery can only exist if there's something to fear. Booth would call that relativity.

Their feet never stop moving but his hand seems to spasm on her hip, clenching then slackening then clenching again like transient madness. It's not her fear he's reacting to this time, not like that time on the sidewalk when she, with a look, had reduced his fabled love to a pat on the back, to attagirl. Her fear is safe behind a mask, it can't infect him. This madness is his. It makes her feel less alone.

She meant it to be a question but it's not. Because she already knows the answer, has known it for a long time. She's walked around it, looked over it and under it. Tried to pull it up and found it wouldn't budge. She's checked for loose nails. Having done those things, finally certain it was solid, she sat down on it and there she began to grow moss. She forgot the unwritten rule of science: a good answer is one that leads to new questions. She forgot to ask, where do I go from here?

Because the answer is not that he loves her, it's that she loves him back.

And if she loves him, then she was wrong about so many things.

In some ways, Russ taught her one of the most important lessons of her life by walking out: to always be enough for herself. since then she'd assumed the least common denominator from people. She assumed they'd love pieces of her, her intelligence, her beauty, her spirit. Her expectations were never high enough to shatter upon falling. She'd become a beautiful, strong, independent woman. The foremost authority in her field. Never lonely. Never in need. Sufficient unto herself. Enough.

Until him.

So now she's here on the arm of the man who'd begun, long ago, to ruin her, to teach her a different lesson: there's something better than enough. It's sad in a way. He's taken something from her. She's lost her tragic innocence.

So she holds him as close as he's holding her to make up the difference. She steps into the space he's made for her, bounded by the bow of his shoulders and the plane of his chest. Tucked in close, she can hear the working of his heart, the relentless pump of the valves. A lion's heart the psychic said.

The only thing she knows about tarot cards is that Death means change.

She thinks of the cards because she's looked up at his mask, at the smooth, perfectly formed lips. She knows how his mask fits with hers.

The Lovers.

If the Death card means change, she thinks, the Lovers must mean death. For them anyway, he and she. Because their masks fit like lovers and someone is going to die tonight. Because she was wrong. They were wrong. Wrong about lines like people are wrong about masks. Masquerades are not about hiding but about revealing. They are about who are you when the consequences are gone, when you realize the only consequences were ever the one you made for yourself.

They're still dancing, still spinning, but something is different. The crowd is thinner. There is the door in sight.

They have only one choice to make, go forward to the door or stop here at a waterless oasis. To love or not to love. It's as easy and deadly as that. Easy because here, everything is distilled, there are no other options to consider, deadly because not everyone will survive tonight. Choosing the Lovers means choosing something new. So someone dies at the stroke of midnight. Who they are or who they could be.


	6. already at last

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**Note:** **I don't usually do this but this is the part where I'll ask you to weigh in. I rated this story 'M for alter parts' and that carries a certain implication. We haven't gotten to 'M' but there's an amount of completeness to this chapter. So ... to go on or not? For the first time with this sotry, I'm not sure so I'll leave it to the spectators ;)**

_[6] already at last_

He sets her spinning the length of an arm. She detours him the circumference of a circle, describing the lines with dancing soles, legs like a compass, bound by the axis of hip on hip. Ever circling.

They're the sort of people other people notice. Most days, the lingering glances reflect back and forth over their heads, bounced from knowing smile to knowing smile. Over them, passing strangers have met, sharing grins, wondering who he is to her and she to him. Looking, naturally, for the identity of one in the other.

They shrug and nod and wink at one another, security guards, waitresses, store clerks-brief connections like dipole moments and then gone again. They go about their business, routine and habit soothing the small disturbance that is Booth and Bones, the ripple of amusement or jealously, the secret thrill and resentment of someone else's romance.

Others look a little deeper. Friends, family, never-quite-significant-enough-others. They look long and hard from the corners of eyes, repelled and attracted, unable to look straight on. It's hard to look your greatest fear in the eye, almost impossible to stare down what could be a near miss.

But for them, the spin has never been a widening gyre. Gravity will win out. It's perfectly clear to all attending that they're moving toward the door.

Yes, the casual glance sees the couple too wrapped up in one another to hide it under professionalism and the familiar glance sees best friends and perfect partners and almost lovers. Two out of three ain't bad. It's the normal sort of good. The comfortable sort of imperfection. But _almost_ is something else entirely. Two-and-a-half out of three. Rounded down from perfect.

And here they are a few steps from the door.

They linger like held breath.

They burn like an ache in the lungs.

###

"They're leaving," Hodgins says in a rush.

Daisy's gasp asks, "Already?" and Cam's sigh says, "At _last_."

But Sweets and Angela trade a look, it's one of lips pressed over the pressure in tight lungs. They are neither scientists nor cops. But they know about the power of observation, how something becomes real when there's someone to witness it.

You can leave a masquerade and go back to your real life, having left all the parts that didn't fit behind the closed door and inside the mask. You can leave by another door, by a window. The circus packs up and what happens in Vegas....

You can go right back to where you were before. No consequences.

Or.

###

When the song ends, she finds herself at the door. Is it time to leave already, time to leave at last?

At the edge of her vision there's Michelle, still here, mask propped up on her forehead, head thrown back in laughter. So it's neither early nor late. Still ten minutes to midnight, like their very own doomsday clock. For her, the end of the world means the end of everything, for him it means the end of this world and the beginning of another.

It's not the first time she's hoped he's right.

She tugs the ribbon knotted on the back of her head and it parts easily, falling away. The mask is more difficult, sweat has adhered her skin to the inside surface, stuck the way water does. So she peels off the mask and ... it doesn't hurt exactly, it _smarts_, tingles in the sudden air.

He laughs when she scrunches her nose and blows out her cheeks. It's funny, she supposes, to watch someone get reacquainted with her face. But before long he's looking around a little warily. To be at the party, you have to wear a mask.

So she looks up at him and holds his gaze, head tilted a little, eyebrows already poised and finally waiting.

###

It's not his fault, he'll think later, that it took him a moment to figure it out. He's been waiting so long now for her to catch on that it takes him a second to catch up.

In that second, she loses patience. She's never had to convince herself she needs permission. So her fingers are worrying the knot in the ribbon of his mask, the knot he let her tie for him. He hooks his own fingers through the mask's empty sockets and tugs as the knot comes loose.

The mask is still there, dangling from an index finger, when he leans over to kiss her. Her lips are the only thing soft in the kiss. Breath stops short in favor of clasping hands and closing eyes. All his awareness collapses in on his lips against her.

When they part, he drops the mask, hands busy holding her close. In parting, she'd caught his bottom lip with her teeth. It tingles in the sudden air.

His mask has dropped to the floor so his hand drops to the small of her back. This dance, this music, isn't for them anymore but there's still a harmony to their motion. He holds the door open for her. "To be at the party, you have to wear a mask," he says.

"Then I guess we don't have a choice," she says, pulling him through behind her.

And they laugh because she's wrong. They've always had a choice.

Always.

But they've already made it.


End file.
